In Danger's Path

by W. E. B Griffin

  The day before yesterday, I gave the bearer of this note, Captain Jim Weston, his F4U check ride. Since Charley Galloway trained him, I was not surprised that he passed it 4.0.

  For unbelievably idiotic reasons, however, he will soon be sent to P’Cola to learn how to fly all over again. He will tell you the details of this moronic behavior in high places.

  Moreover, he’s a friend of Charley’s, Big Steve’s, and mine. Do what you can for him as a favor to all of us.

  Always,

  Clyde W. Dawkins, LtCol, USMC

  * * *

  “I saw Major Williamson half an hour ago at the Yacht Club,” the j.g. said, displaying a nearly miraculous change of attitude. “I was sanding my bottom.”

  Captain Weston had an instant mental image of the j.g. sanding his bottom, before he realized he was talking about the bottom of a boat. The smile that came to his face, however, was misinterpreted by the j.g. as a gesture of friendship between fellow sailors. He smiled warmly back.

  “I’d say go down there,” he said. “But I think he’s probably gone by now.”

  “I’ve been trying to get his phone number.”

  “Marine!” the j.g. ordered, “bring the base phone book over here!”

  The PFC delivered the phone book. Major Williamson’s name was not listed. The j.g. examined the cover of the phone book.

  “This is outdated!” he said.

  “Sorry, sir,” the PFC said.

  “I think the smartest thing for you to do, sir,” the j.g. said, “is go to the Main Officer’s Club. You know where that is?”

  “I trained here,” Weston said.

  “They’ll have the latest phone book,” the j.g. said.

  “Thank you,” Weston said.

  “I’m really sorry you were inconvenienced here, Captain. But sometimes—no offense intended—Marines sometimes get carried away.”

  “No offense taken,” Weston said. “I presume I’m free to go?”

  “Yes, sir,” the j.g. said. “Of course. Welcome home, sir.”

  The Main Officer’s Club was a rambling white stucco building that he remembered as stifling in the summer, but that now had air-conditioning. Weston found it without trouble. The cocktail lounge he also found without trouble. There he decided what he needed before lunch was at least two drinks.

  He was about to order the second double scotch when it occurred to him that he might not make the proper impression on Major Avery Williamson if he appeared in a cloud of scotch fumes.

  “Where can I find a phone book?” he asked.

  “There’s a phone booth in the lobby, sir.”

  Weston paid for the drink and went to the lobby. There was indeed a phone book, and it listed the quarters telephone number for Williamson, A. R., Maj. USMC. Weston wrote it down, then waited for the occupant of the phone booth to finish. She was a slightly portly matron in a floppy hat whose husband, Weston decided, was probably at least a lieutenant commander.

  “Sir,” a crisp naval voice said in his ear. Weston turned to see a full lieutenant wearing the insignia of an aide-de-camp.

  Now what?

  “Sir, is your name Weston?”

  Weston nodded.

  “Sir, the Admiral’s compliments. Sir, the Admiral would be grateful for a few words with you.”

  What admiral? Weston wondered.

  “That would be my great pleasure, Lieutenant,” Weston said.

  The lieutenant marched across the lobby and into the dining room, then led him to a corner table where a vice admiral, a rear admiral, a Navy captain, and a Marine colonel were sitting. Weston recognized the vice admiral.

  “Good afternoon, sir,” he said.

  “Jim, a little eagerness is a good thing,” Vice Admiral Richard B. Sayre said, rising to his feet and putting out his hand. “But you’re not due here for a month.”

  “Sir?”

  “But we’ll talk about that later. I’m really glad to see you. Until General McInerney called, I thought you’d been lost in the Philippines.”

  Brigadier General D. G. McInerney was the Deputy Director of Marine Corps Aviation.

  “I managed to get out, sir,” Weston said.

  “So I understand. General McInerney and I had a long talk about that, and about Ewa, and about our mutual friend, Colonel Dawkins. He led me to believe you wouldn’t be coming here for a month.”

  “I’m just passing through, sir. On a weekend pass.”

  “Well, I know that Mrs. Sayre and Martha would be very disappointed to miss you. Could you find time to call?”

  “At your convenience, sir,” Weston said, then asked, “Martha’s here?”

  “Yes, she is,” Admiral Sayre said simply.

  “And where’s Greg?”

  Jesus, with a little bit of luck, Greg might be here, too, if Martha is.

  Admiral Sayre looked at him sharply.

  And then the look softened.

  “Of course, you were trapped in the Philippines, there was no way you could know. Greg was shot down at Wake Island, Jim. Right at the beginning.”

  “Oh, shit!” Weston blurted bitterly. “I’m so sorry to hear that!”

  “Captain Weston, gentlemen,” Admiral Sayre said, retaining control of his voice with great effort, “and my late son-in-law Lieutenant Gregory Culhane, USMC, Class of ’38, got their wings here together. Jim was Greg’s best man when he and my daughter Martha were married.”

  “And this is the first you’d heard of Lieutenant Culhane’s loss, Captain?” the Marine Colonel asked.

  “Yes, sir.”

  “You were obviously pretty busy in the Pacific yourself,” the Colonel said, pointing at Weston’s fruit salad.

  “Jim refused to surrender,” Admiral Sayre said. “He made his way from Corregidor to Mindanao, where he was G-2 of the guerrilla organization operating there, until they brought him out by submarine.”

  Jesus, how did he know about that?

  What did he say about General McInerney calling him?

  “Really?” the Marine Colonel said, impressed.

  “Well, now he’s back to flying,” Admiral Sayre said, meeting Weston’s eyes as he spoke. “Or soon will be. What Mac McInerney and I are trying to do is get him back in a fighter cockpit as quickly as possible.”

  I’ll be damned! McInerney didn’t just give up, and give in to those bastards in Washington.

  “I’d like to talk to you about that, Jim,” Admiral Sayre went on. “If you would have the time while you’re here.”

  “I’m going to have to leave here early tomorrow morning, sir.”

  Local Area Only authority to leave the grounds of the Greenbrier on the verbal orders of the commanding officer expired at midnight on Sunday.

  “We don’t want you hungover when you begin your happy rest-and-recuperation program on Monday morning,” Commander Bolemann had explained.

  “Well, I suggest that you go over to the house and see Mrs. Sayre and Martha now—Jerry, call up and tell them he’s coming.”

  “Aye, aye, sir,” the Admiral’s aide said.

  “And as soon as I’m through here, I’ll come home, and we can have a chat. There’s someone I want you to meet.”

  “Aye, aye, sir,” Weston said.

  “Jerry, run down Major Williamson, and ask him if he could come by my quarters at, say, 1530.”

  “Aye, aye, sir.”

  “I’m really glad to see you, Jim,” Admiral Sayre said, offering Weston his hand again.

  Weston sensed he had been dismissed.

  Mrs. Jean Sayre, a tall, slim, gray-haired woman with gentle and perceptive eyes, came out the front door of Quarters Number One as Jim Weston drove the Buick into the driveway.

  “Oh, Jim,” she said when he stepped out of the car, “when I heard you escaped from the Philippines, I was afraid you’d look like death warmed over! You look wonderful!”

  She hugged him. He felt his eyes start to water and closed them. When he opened them he saw Martha, stand
ing in the door. She was tall and slim, and looked very much like her mother. She was deeply tanned and her sunbleached blond hair hung down to her shoulders.

  What is she now, twenty-three, twenty-four? And a goddamn widow! Goddamn it! Did they have a kid?

  She came halfway down the walk to him as he walked toward the door.

  “Well, look what floated in with the tide,” she said.

  “Don’t I get a hug?” he asked.

  She hugged him. He was uncomfortable when he felt the pressure of her breasts against his abdomen, and quickly broke away.

  “Mother said I wasn’t to ask you how you were, or comment on your appearance,” Martha said. “So I won’t.”

  “I’m fine, thank you for asking.”

  “You look good,” she said. “God, Jimmy, I’m glad to see you.”

  “I didn’t know about Greg, until just now,” he said. “Jesus Christ, I’m sorry.”

  “Let’s go in the house,” Mrs. Sayre said, coming up behind them. “There’s no champagne, but I think we should have a drink.”

  A dark-skinned man in a crisply starched white cotton jacket stood just inside the door.

  Christ, he’s a Filipino messman. We let them join the Navy, but only as messmen. They’re our Little Brown Brothers, not good enough to serve as real sailors.

  “Good morning, sir,” he said.

  “Buenos días,” Weston said.

  “Pedro, would you roll the bar onto the patio?” Mrs. Sayre asked. “Despite the hour, we are going to have a drink. Possibly two. You remember Captain Weston, don’t you? He’s a dear friend of the family.”

  “Yes, ma’am,” the messman said.

  Does that mean he remembers me? I don’t remember him.

  “That being the case,” Martha said, as they walked through the house and onto the patio, “dear friend of the family, why didn’t you call and tell us you were coming? For that matter, why didn’t you call and just tell us you were alive?”

  He met her eyes, and noticed how blue they were.

  “I don’t know, Martha,” he said. “The last couple of weeks have been really hectic.”

  They sat down on upholstered white metal lawn furniture. The way she was sitting—innocently, of course—Weston could see a long way up her cotton skirt. She was not wearing hose, and he remembered Janice telling him that silk stockings were almost impossible to find.

  Pedro wheeled a bar loaded with whisky bottles onto the patio, then stood, obviously waiting for orders.

  “What would you like, Jim?” Mrs. Sayre asked.

  Among the nearly dozen bottles on the bar, there was a bottle of good scotch, scotch too good to be diluted with water. Without thinking about it, Weston asked, in Spanish, for “some of the good stuff, a double, please, ice but no water.”

  “That’s new,” Martha said. “When did you learn to speak Spanish?”

  “Ninety percent of U.S. forces in the Philippines are Filipinos,” Weston said, as much to the messman as Martha. “You either learn to speak Spanish, or you don’t get much done.”

  “Permission to speak, sir?” the messman asked.

  “Of course,” Weston said.

  “Sir, there was a story in the newspaper. It said there were guerrilla forces operating on my home island of Mindanao.”

  “Yes, there are,” Weston said.

  “Sir, and you were there?”

  Weston nodded.

  “Just a minute, Pedro,” Jean Sayre said. “Make the drinks. I’ll have whatever Captain Weston is having.”

  “Good scotch, ice, double, no water, ma’am.”

  Weston felt anger well up within him.

  “With a little water. Fix a single for Miss Martha.”

  “Yes, ma’am.”

  Weston was surprised at his fury at her treatment of the Filipino.

  “Then make yourself whatever you want, pull up a chair and sit down with us. Captain Weston’s going to start at the beginning and tell us everything.”

  “Yes, ma’am,” the messman said. “Thank you.”

  Christ, I should have known better. She’s what an officer’s lady is supposed to be.

  He sensed Martha’s eyes on him, and knew somehow that she had seen his reaction.

  “Pedro’s been taking care of us for a long time,” Martha said. “He was Daddy’s steward on the Lexington. When Daddy made rear admiral and came ashore, Pedro came with him. You don’t remember him?”

  “I thought you looked familiar, Pedro,” Weston said.

  That’s bullshit. If he was here the last time I was here, he was simply part of the furnishings. I was as bad then about our Little Brown Brothers as I thought Mrs. Sayre was now.

  Pedro made the drinks, handed them around, then took a Coca-Cola for himself and pulled up a chair.

  “The last we heard, Jim, you’d been sent to a Navy Catalina Squadron at Pearl…. Wait a minute. What should we drink to?”

  “Greg,” he blurted without thinking.

  “Greg,” Mrs. Sayre said softly, raising her glass.

  Martha, looking at Jim, raised her glass but didn’t speak.

  “You were at Pearl, Jim?” Mrs. Sayre said. “How did you get to the Philippines?”

  “I flew a Catalina into Cavite on December eight,” Weston began, and related, over the next hour, his experiences in the Philippines. He left out, of course, the less pleasant aspects. But he did tell them, in some detail, about Sergeant Percy L. Everly, USMC—now First Lieutenant Percy Everly, U.S. Army Reserve—and about how Brigadier General Wendell W. Fertig came to be a brigadier general.

  “That was very clever of him,” Mrs. Sayre said, “wouldn’t you say so, Pedro? No one would pay much attention to a reserve lieutenant colonel, would they?”

  “I am afraid not,” Pedro said. “He apparently knows Filipinos.”

  “And admires them,” Weston said, hoping it would please the messman. His face showed it did.

  “I wonder if I could not be useful there,” Pedro wondered out loud. “I have sixteen years in the Navy and Mindanao is my home.”

  “The problem we had with Filipinos when I left, Pedro,” Weston said, “was not finding recruits, but sending them away because we didn’t have arms for them.”

  That, too, pleased Pedro, and that pleased Weston.

  “And taking care of the Admiral is important, Pedro,” Mrs. Sayre said. “I don’t know what he would do without you. And he, too, would rather be over there than here.”

  The door chimes went off.

  “That’s probably Daddy,” Martha said. “He doesn’t know how to open a door by himself. I’ll go, Pedro.”

  Without meaning to, Weston got another look up her dress as she lifted herself out of the chair.

  It was not Admiral Sayre, it was a Marine major, short, lean, and suntanned, in a blond crew cut. “Afternoon, Mrs. Sayre,” he said. “The Admiral asked me to call at 1530.”

  When Weston politely rose to his feet, he felt a little dizzy. As long as he’d been talking, he managed to remember, Pedro had quietly freshened up his glass whenever it had dropped below half empty.

  Christ, I’m half in the bag!

  And then he remembered that Pedro had freshened up Martha’s drink several times, too. He looked at her. Her face seemed a little flushed.

  Mrs. Sayre glanced at her wristwatch.

  “Well, if he said half past three, he’ll be here at half past three,” she said. “Major Williamson, this is a dear friend of the family—”

  “So dear that he didn’t even call up to tell us he was alive,” Martha said.

  Jesus, is she plastered, too?

  Martha’s mother ignored the interruption, and went on: “—Captain Jim Weston.”

  “How do you do, sir?”

  “Weston,” Major Williamson said, with no cordiality whatsoever.

  I think he senses I have been at the sauce in the middle of the afternoon.

  “Can Pedro fix you something, Major?” Mrs. Sayre asked. />
  Major Williamson gave it perceptible thought before replying, “A light scotch, Mrs. Sayre, would be very nice.”

  “Captain Weston was my late husband’s best man when we were married. He’s been telling us of his experiences as a guerrilla in the Philippines,” Martha said.

  “You were a guerrilla in the Philippines, Captain?” Williamson said, looking at him dubiously.

  “Yes, sir.”

  The door chimes went off again as Major Williamson opened his mouth to press for details.

  “That has to be Daddy,” Martha said. “I’ll go.”

  Weston got another look up her dress at her spectacular legs as she left her chair again.

  You got the look up her dress, because you knew she would probably, and certainly innocently, expose herself that way again when she got out of her chair. Which proves you are a despicable sonofabitch—she’s your buddy’s widow, for Christ’s sake—or drunk. Or both.

  What you came here to do was get Colonel Dawkins’s letter into Major Williamson’s hand, not make an ass of yourself, not be a despicable bastard. And only a despicable bastard would think…Jesus, I’d like to run my hands…

  “Sir,” Weston heard himself blurting, “I believe we have some mutual friends.”

  “Is that so?”

  After some difficulty finding it, Weston took Colonel Dawkins’s letter from an inside pocket and thrust it at Major Williamson.

  “What’s this?” Williamson said.

  “I believe it will be self-explanatory, sir,” Weston said.

  Williamson took the letter, unfolded it, and looked at Weston.

  “I’ll be damned,” he said, his tone indicating that he was truly surprised to learn that they did have mutual friends.

  Admiral Sayre marched into the room, trailed by his aide.

  “Dick,” he said, touching Williamson’s shoulder, “I really appreciate your coming here on Saturday afternoon.”

  “No problem at all, sir.”

  “I won’t have the time—as I had hoped to—to talk to you about Weston. But I just got the word that Admiral Wheeler is due in here in about thirty minutes—God only knows what he wants—and I will, of course, have to meet his plane. But at least you got to meet Weston. It’s a long story, but he comes highly recommended by General McInerney, and we’re going to have to do what we can for him.”